


instincts

by wildenessat221b



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (kinda subtle tho), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Crowley, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Touch-Starved, back in time... stuff, crowley being emo about the stars, im excited lads, let's play the will the formatting work game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 14:53:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19770544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildenessat221b/pseuds/wildenessat221b
Summary: Eventually, Crowley learns to trust his instincts.(communication is tricky. for a while it is, anyway.)





	instincts

eventually, everything is reduced down to a cottage on a hill,

and house plants that tremble,

and the smell of freshly baked bread,

and the sound of a babbling brook.

eventually, everything else is a memory,

whispered at the back of the mind,

just behind the eardrum, perhaps,

or into a shoulder blade, if bravery rears its head.

eventually, it’s a redundant question,

born of curiosity and swaddled in lingering insecurity,

the question that had been so potent before,

now just a brushstroke on the canvas that they’d painted.

**“why did you wait so long?**

**is it because you didn’t want this?”**

**_“oh, darling…_ **

**_not by a longshot.”_ **

\--------

It was the nineteenth century, perhaps a third of the way in if the knot in his lower back was anything to go by, and he was only supposed to have gotten up to use the restroom.

It had been _fine_ when he was asleep, it had all been _fine._

_Why had he chosen the countryside?_

The cities were shrouded with dust, the cities were muffled. In a few decades the cities would be suffocating, but Crowley didn’t know that just yet. All he currently knew was that there was nowhere he’d rather be than there, breathing in the smog, breathing in the _obscurity._

_Through the clear country air, he could see the stars._

_In all their fucking glory._

He raised an unsteady finger to drag across the condensation on the window, tracing spider’s-silk lines between the pockets of light that _he’d held in his hands._

The humans did that too. Played dot-to-dot with his stars. Like children.

(He was so much like them and yet the cruel punishment blinking out from his skull ensured that he’d _never be anything like them.)_

The world was a different one to the one he’d crawled into bed in, he could feel it. The whispers on the air were different, the vibrations in the ground were different. The smell was different, the density of the atmosphere was different.

He wondered if there would still be a place for him in it when he returned.

(Although really, had there ever been? Or had he just illicitly carved one out, chipping away and chipping away with the ice-pick that was existence. That was his job wasn’t it, that was _supposed_ to be his job. To chip away meticulously at human life until the inevitable day when it caved in on itself and he received a Distinction in the post.

But it was scary, it was horribly, horribly scary – so horribly scary in fact that Crowley knew that the day the Earth caved in would be the day he caved in too.

He wasn’t sure what scared him more – the possibility of the world collapsing in on itself or the realisation that his reaction to it meant that he was even _bad_ at doing _wrong_.)

As it had a somewhat concerning tendency to, his mind wandered to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale didn’t care whether or not the world could accommodate him – if it seemed as though it couldn’t, he simply skirted along the top of it, wearing his out-of-date apparel and eccentricity like an outlandish dinner jacket. Aziraphale rode the coat-tails of the world, bobbing along leisurely half a century behind it. Aziraphale’s worries were tied to the here and now – to whether the storm would clear in time for him to perform the minor blessing in Teeside, to whether the bakery down the road would run out of current bread before he got there – and never grew beyond their easily compartmentalizable sphere.

Aziraphale didn’t have to sleep for decades at the mere whiff of boredom for fear of being left alone with his own thoughts.

Crowley raised his arms above his head and winced at the crack that sounded. Then, he closed his eyes and allowed scales to blossom along his back. His limbs retreated, his body elongated and his head suddenly matched his eyes. At least _physically_ there was something he could do to make everything feel simpler.

Crowley’s thoughts were pruned back when he was in snake form, stripped back to their barest.

It was, therefore, something buried deep within his psych that asked the question, “I wonder if Aziraphale ever watches the stars,” as he drifted back to sleep.

\--------

_(He did, every night in fact._

_He climbed the stairs to the highest point in the building and miracled away a small patch of London grime._

_He sat for seconds, hours or somewhere in between and watched them blink, shine and glimmer._

_He thought they were a masterpiece, so much so that he took great pains to scour them intently for the faintest sign of their crafter._

_Whoever it was did a marvellous job.)_

_\--------_

**_“it wasn’t an option,_ **

**_you know that.”_ **

**“yeah. but you…”**

**_“i what?”_ **

**“everything else…**

**you just sort of…**

**made work.”**

**_“with all due dear,_ **

**_you didn’t give me a_ **

**_lot to work with.”_ **

**“…touché.”**

\--------

It was the eleventh century and Aziraphale was living as a monk. It seemed like the obvious choice – piety rather came with the territory and he had less reservations than an angel possibly should about using the odd miracle to work around the strict poverty.

He had it on good authority that the Almighty respected that people had _standards._

His room was modest of course – bare walls and a stone floor. He had a washing bowl, a bed that (certainly _looked_ as though it) was made of straw, and a stool which he used to deposit his robes on.

He quite liked this setting. It certainly wasn’t the worst place he’d ever housed himself in and it was infinitely better than the sterility of heaven. He liked the roughness of the place, the vague impression that it was fraying at the edges, that it was _lived in._

He was not, however, a fan of the loneliness.

Luckily, that didn’t seem as though it was going to be an issue for the immediate future, because his door was being nudged open.

He had a visitor.

“Hello?” Aziraphale called, as his visitor apparently grappled with the heavy wood.

His reply was a soft hiss.

“Crowley? What on Earth are you doing here, dear boy?”

Aziraphale had only seen his snake form once before and actually, he remembered it being a lot larger – tree-trunk thick with a human-sized head; this one was perhaps the thickness of his arm with a rabbit-sized head – but it was unmistakably Crowley. From the red tinge to the shimmer of his scales, to the distinctive sway that his human form could never quite shake. And his eyes of course. Those star-yellow eyes that grew golden in diminished light and which Aziraphale could pick out from a line up of ten billion.

Crowley slithered up to his feet and nodded his head in greeting, then moved towards the stool. Aziraphale watched silently as he burrowed under the pile of robes, before letting out a hiss which in a thousand years or so could be compared to a deflating bicycle tire and stilling.

“Crowley, what on Earth are you-“

A second hiss, with a shushing quality.

Aziraphale sighed.

“Alright… alright…”

That night, Aziraphale lit a candle and placed it at the base of the stool. He refused to miracle up any dead rodents unless Crowley’s snake form could produce a _really_ pathetic look, but left the washing bowl full of clean water.

Although rarely inclined to sleep, he felt it somewhat odd to be awake in a room while someone else was sleeping, even if that someone else was currently in a non-human corporation. So, he waited for a couple of hours after the sun had gone down, he tucked himself into his straw (like) bed.

He awoke following a dreamless sleep with a warm, scaly body curled up on his feet. Its eyes were wide, staring and unmistakably awake.

“Crowley…” Aziraphale whispered into the darkness. “Why are you here?”

Crowley expelled a long breath, then tucked his head beneath his midriff.

Aziraphale closed his eyes and sighed.

Regrettably, he drifted off again and when he awoke, his chamber was empty.

\--------

_(Humans were getting crueller, and specifically crueller to people they didn’t understand, or people who looked a little bit different._

_You were especially unlucky if you ticked both boxes._

_You were especially unlucky if you had the eyes of a snake._

_So unlucky in fact, that you found yourself choosing to slither down the street instead of walking, saving your fifth newly-issued post-discorporation body in only a decade for when it was absolutely necessary._

_In your snake body, you followed your instincts._

_And your instincts apparently send you to an angel who currently lives in a convent._

_Perhaps a little odd for a demonic set of instincts, but to each their own.)_

_\--------_

**“…do you know when i fell in love?”**

**_“…no._ **

**_i don’t think i do.”_ **

**“hmm.”**

**_“well?”_ **

**“well what?”**

**_“are you going to_ **

**_tell me?”_ **

**“no. i don’t think i am.”**

**_“…alright then.”_ **

\--------

The time that it was didn’t have a number yet, but the place that it was had flowers of every colour and trees of every species and creatures of every genus.

It didn’t have people, nor a flaming sword.

It did have a disobedient angel and a disobedient demon and a swooping feeling like a cosmic shift.

Crowley felt that it was somewhat unfair that he should have to fall again so soon after his last one.

\--------

**_“was it worth the wait,_ **

**_do you think?”_ **

**“oh, infinitely.**

**and we’re poster children**

**for infinity.”**

_**“yes, I suppose we are. it all** _

_**fell into place naturally in** _

_**the end, didn’t it?”** _

**“no. this is nothing**

**like falling.**

**natural though?**

**most certainly.**

**like an instinct.”**

eventually, there were kisses on the nose,

and affectionate jibes,

and cups of tea

without having to ask.

and the feeling of security

and safety

and instinctive rightness

without having to slither towards it.

\--------

~fin~ 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends!  
> Just a little one-shot... hope you enjoyed.  
> If you did, a comment would be much appreciated... they truly make my day.  
> Thanks again!


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